NHL 22 PS4 Share Play Doesn't Work

[Pete21982]

NHL 22 does not work on share play. When we try to connect, the game says "game cannot be viewed because this game is not available in your region". My friend and I have been playing the same share play franchise together for the better part of two years. What can we do to fix this?

[Duranbeaz]

Also having trouble with NHL 22 and Madden 22. My friend and I have logged hundreds of hours on this game over share play, also to play franchise mode together. We're both in the same region and nothing has changed. I did notice that there seemed to be some kind of update as I had to agree to EA terms of service on both games, so perhaps there as a glitch with the last update? I see this has been an issue randomly in the past and been fixed but no one seems to know what the fix is. Hoping EA can resolve this soon!

[loveablegeek]

This same thing happened to me with NHL 20 about two years ago. Same error, game not available or released in our region... but we both in the US, both in the same time zone, and both had physical copies of the game in our consoles at the time. Now, in 2024, the same error message appeared while connecting to Share Play with NHL 22.

Here's the thread from 2022, when NHL 20 stopped working.

My suspicion is that NHL 22 has been removed from the Playstation store for digital purchase, and now Share Play is "broken" to force users to buy NHL 24. The two-year cycle seems to match both scenarios perfectly.

[loveablegeek]

@Duranbeaz Searching for other, similar issues yields a number of threads, mostly for EA games.

One user claimed that they had a workaround, which is for both users to physically have the disc and install it on their consoles. From my experience in 2022, this does not resolve the issue. :/

[loveablegeek]

From a conversation with two Sony support specialists:

[Duranbeaz]

@loveablegeek Thanks for the suggestions. Yes, we both have disc versons of the game installed and are able to play online versus mode against each other, just not share play. It does not make sense to me that the servers would still be working for online play but not share play. If we were living in the same city, we'd be able to get together and continue our franchise. If this is actually an intentional move, it's frustrating that they punish players who just want to play local games together. That would make me want to buy a future game less, not more. Hopefully it's resolved, so we can least finish our season before considering whether to upgrade. 

It seemed as though at least some of the past issues resolved themselves after a week or two, so I'm hoping that's the case here.

[loveablegeek]

Ben at Sony has confirmed that when EA and Sony removed NHL 22 from the Playstation Store, that is what broke Share Play. 

[Duranbeaz]

@loveablegeek Thanks for looking into that. Good to have an answer albeit a frustrating one.